AP exposé on the plight of homeless gay, trans youth

Gizmo Lopez, 19, comes from a staunchly Catholic family with Puerto Rican roots. She now sleeps on the subway.

“I’m bisexual, and my stepfather didn’t approve; he said it’s wrong,” said the teenager, whose mother died two years ago.

Her father moved to Puerto Rico with her two half-brothers, leaving her behind — alone in the family’s apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. One day afternoon, when she came home from school, “I found a pink slip on the door.”

She was evicted.

Catholic family values. Then again, dad was only following the lead of the Catholic bishops, who routinely hate on gays.

The support saved Demetrius Smith, an 18-year-old who left his great-grandmother’s Michigan farm years ago because “she whipped me, and she beat me with an umbrella because she thought I acted like a girl.”

John AravosisFollow me on Twitter: @aravosis | @americablog | @americabloggay | Facebook | Instagram | Google+ | LinkedIn. John Aravosis is the Executive Editor of AMERICAblog, which he founded in 2004. He has a joint law degree (JD) and masters in Foreign Service from Georgetown; and has worked in the US Senate, World Bank, Children's Defense Fund, the United Nations Development Programme, and as a stringer for the Economist. He is a frequent TV pundit, having appeared on the O'Reilly Factor, Hardball, World News Tonight, Nightline, AM Joy & Reliable Sources, among others. John lives in Washington, DC. John's article archive.